Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-07T11:53:52.911Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Deforestation dynamics in a fragmented region of southern Amazonia: evaluation and future scenarios

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 August 2008

FERNANDA MICHALSKI ,
CARLOS A. PERES  and
IAIN R. LAKE
FERNANDA MICHALSKI*
Affiliation:
Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK Instituto Pró-Carnívoros, CP 10, Atibaia, SP, 12940-970, Brazil
CARLOS A. PERES
Affiliation:
Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK
IAIN R. LAKE
Affiliation:
Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK
*
*Correspondence: Dr Fernanda Michalski Fax: +55 51 3332 0762 e-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Summary

The ‘arc of deforestation’ of southern Amazonia has one of the highest deforestation rates documented anywhere in the world. Landscape changes in a poorly studied but strategically important region in the Brazilian Amazon were studied using biennial Landsat TM/ETM+ images from 1984 to 2004. Deforestation rate for the period 1984–2004 was 2.47% yr−1 in the 7295 km2 study area, but decreased to 1.99% and 2.15% in 2000–2002 and 2002–2004, respectively. Landscape structure changes were characterized by smaller forest patches that were further apart, but increasingly complex in shape. Deforestation was mainly driven by cattle ranching, which in turn was affected by distance to roads, with forest cover increasing at greater distances from roads. A multi-layer perceptron was used to develop future scenarios based on Markov Chain analysis. Based on current land use, forest cover in the region will decline from 42% in 2004 to 21% by 2016. Results indicate a critical threshold at 51% of forest cover in which landscape structure and connectivity changes abruptly. This suggests that the region requires greater efforts in environmental law enforcement, land-use planning and education programmes to maintain the remaining forest cover near this threshold.

Keywords

Alta FlorestaAmazondeforestationland-cover changegeographical information systemMato Grosso
Type
Papers
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , June 2008 , pp. 93 - 103
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alves, D.S., Pereira, J.L.G., Souza, C.L., Soares, J.V. & Yamaguchi, F. (1999) Characterizing landscape changes in central Rondônia using Landsat TM imagery. International Journal of Remote Sense 20: 2877–2882.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Armenteras, D., Rudas, G., Rodriguez, N., Sua, S. & Romero, N. (2006) Patterns and causes of deforestation in the Colombian Amazon. Ecological Indicators 6: 353–368.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Asner, G.P., Knapp, D.E., Broadbent, E.N., Oliveira, P.J.C., Keller, M. & Silva, J.N. (2005) Selective logging in the Brazilian Amazon. Science 310: 480–482.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Avissar, R., da Silva, R.R., & Werth, D. (2006) Impacts of tropical deforestation on regional and global hydroclimatology. In: Emerging Threats to Tropical Forests, ed. Laurance, W. F. & Peres, C.A., pp. 67–79. Chicago, IL, USA: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Baumann, R., Rivero, J., Zavattiero, Y. & ECLAC, Brasilia office (1998) Tariffs and the Plano Real in Brazil. Cepal Review 66: 171–185.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brandão, A.O. & Souza, C.M. (2006) Mapping unofficial roads with Landsat images: a new tool to improve the monitoring of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest. International Journal of Remote Sensing 27: 177–189.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, D.G., Pijanowski, B.C. & Duh, J.D. (2000) Modeling the relationships between land use and land cover on private lands in the Upper Midwest, USA. Journal of Environmental Management 59: 247–263.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carsjens, G.J. & van Lier, H.N. (2002) Fragmentation and land-use planning – an introduction. Landscape and Urban Planning 58: 79–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark Labs (1987–2006) Idrisi 15: The Andes Edition. The Idrisi Project. Clark University, Worcester, MA, USA [www document]. URL http://www.clarklabs.orgGoogle Scholar
Coppedge, B.R., Engle, D.M., Fuhlendorf, S.D., Masters, R.E., & Gregory, M.S. (2001) Landscape cover type and pattern dynamics in fragmented southern Great Plains grasslands, USA. Landscape Ecology 16: 677–690.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cox, P.M., Betts, R.A., Collins, M., Harris, P.P., Huntingford, C. & Jones, C.D. (2004) Amazonian forest dieback under climate-carbon cycle projections for the 21st century. Theoretical and Applied Climatology 78: 137–156.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davidson, C. (1998) Issues in measuring landscape fragmentation. Wildlife Society Bulletin 26: 32–37.Google Scholar
Davidson, E.A. & Artaxo, P. (2004) Globally significant changes in biological processes of the Amazon basin: results of the large-scale biosphere-atmosphere experiment. Global Change Biology 10: 519–529.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diamond, J.M. (1976) Island biogeography and conservation: strategy and limitations. Science 193: 1027–1029.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
ESRI (2005) ArcGis-version 9.1. Redlands, California, USA.Google Scholar
Fahrig, L. (2003) Effects of habitat fragmentation on biodiversity. Annual Review of Ecology Evolution and Systematics 34: 487–515.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferraz, S.F. de B., Vettorazzi, C.A., Theobald, D.M. & Ballester, M.V.R. (2005) Landscape dynamics of Amazonian deforestation between 1984 and 2002 in central Rondônia, Brazil: assessment and future scenarios. Forest Ecology and Management 204: 67–83.Google Scholar
Ferraz, S.F. de B, Capao, L.M.S.A.C. & Vettorazzi, C.A. (2006) Temporal scale and spatial resolution effects on Amazon forest fragmentation assessment in Rondonia. International Journal of Remote Sensing 27: 459–472.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gardner, R.H., Milne, B.T., Turner, M.G. & O'Neill, R.V. (1987) Neutral models for the analysis of broad-scale landscape pattern. Landscape Ecology 1: 19–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grainger, A. (1993) Rates of deforestation in the humid tropics: estimates and measurements. The Geographical Journal 159: 33–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gullison, R.E., Frumhoff, P.C., Canadell, J.G., Field, C.B., Nepstad, D.C., Hayhoe, K., Avissar, R., Curran, L.M., Friedlingstein, P., Jones, C.D. & Nobre, C. (2007) Tropical forests and climate policy. Science 316: 985–986.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gurd, D.B., Nudds, T.D. & Rivard, D.H. (2001) Conservation of mammals in Eastern North American wildlife reserves: how small is too small? Conservation Biology 15: 1355–1363.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gustafson, E.J. (1998) Quantifying landscape spatial pattern: what is the state of the art? Ecosystems 1: 143–156.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gustafson, E.J. & Parker, G.R. (1992) Relationships between landcover proportion and indexes of landscape spatial pattern. Landscape Ecology 7: 101–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hacon, S. (1996) Avaliação do risco potencial para saúde humana da exposição de mercúrio na área urbana de Alta Floresta, MT, Bacia Amazônica, Brasil. PhD dissertation, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Niterói, RJ, Brazil: 172 pp.Google Scholar
Hacon, S., Artaxo, P., Gerab, F., Yamasoe, M.A., Campos, R.C., Conti, L.F. & Lacerda, L.D. (1995) Atmospheric mercury and trace elements in the region of Alta Floresta in the Amazon Basin. Water, Air and Soil Pollution 80: 273–283.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hansen, M.C. & DeFries, R.S. (2004) Detecting long-term global forest change using continuous fields of tree-cover maps from 8-km Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) data for the years 1982–99. Ecossystems 7: 695–716.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hecht, S.B. (1993) The logic of livestock and deforestation in Amazonia. BioScience 43: 687–695.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hill, J.L. & Curran, P.J. (2003) Area, shape and isolation of tropical forest fragments: effects on tree species diversity and implications for conservation. Journal of Biogeography 30: 1391–1403.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
IBGE (2006) Pesquisa Pecuária Municipal 1990–2005 [www document]. URL http://www.ibge.gov.br/home/estatistica/economia/ppmGoogle Scholar
IBGE (2007) Estimativas populacionais para os municípios brasileiros 1990–2006 [www document]. URL http://www.ibge.gov.br/home/estatistica/populacaoGoogle Scholar
INPE (2008) Levantamento das áreas deflorestadas da Amazônia Legal no período 1988–2008: resultados. Ministério da Ciência e Tecnologia, São José dos Campos, SP, Brazil [www document]. URL http://www.obt.inpe.br/prodes/Google Scholar
Kirby, K.R., Laurance, W.F., Albernaz, A.K., Schroth, G., Fearnside, P.M., Bergen, S., Venticinque, E.M. & da Costa, C. (2006) The future of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Futures 38: 432–453.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lacerda, L.D., de Souza, M. & Ribeiro, M.G. (2004) The effects of land use change on mercury distribution in soils of Alta Floresta, Southern Amazon. Environmental Pollution 129: 247–255.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Landis, R.J. & Koch, G.G. (1977) The measurement of observer agreement for categorical data. Biometrics 33: 159–174.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Laurance, W.F., Lovejoy, T.E., Vasconcelos, H.L., Bruna, E.M., Didham, R.K., Stouffer, P.C., Gascon, C., Bierregaard, R.O., Laurance, S.G. & Sampaio, E. (2002 a) Ecossystem decay of Amazonian forest fragments: a 22-year investigation. Conservation Biology 16: 605–618.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laurance, W.F., Albernaz, A.K.M., Schroth, G., Fearnside, P.M., Bergen, S., Venticinque, E.M. & Costa, C. da. (2002 b) Predictors of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Journal of Biogeography 29: 737–748.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lees, A.C. & Peres, C.A. (2006) Rapid avifaunal collapse along the Amazonian deforestation frontier. Biological Conservation 133: 198–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacArthur, R.H. & Wilson, E.O. (1967) The Theory of Island Biogeography. Princeton, NJ, USA: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Mas, J.F., Puig, H., Palacio, J.L. & Sosa-López, A. (2004) Modelling deforestation using GIS and artificial neural networks. Ecological Modelling and Software 19: 461–471.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayaux, P., Holmgren, P., Achard, F., Eva, H., Stibig, H. & Branthomme, A. (2005) Tropical forest cover change in 1990s and options for future monitoring. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B – Biological Sciences 360: 373–384.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McGarigal, K. & Marks, B.J. (1995) FRAGSTATS: spatial pattern analysis program for quantifying landscape structure. USDA Forest Service GTR PNW-351, USA.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meir, P., Cox, P. & Grace, J. (2006) The influence of terrestrial ecosystems on climate. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 21: 254–260.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Michalski, F. & Peres, C.A. (2005) Anthropogenic determinants of primate and carnivore local extinctions in a fragmented forest landscape of southern Amazonia. Biological Conservation 124: 383–396.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Michalski, F. & Peres, C.A. (2007) Disturbance-mediated mammal persistence and abundance-area relationships in Amazonian forest fragments. Conservation Biology 21: 1626–1640.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Moran, E.F., Packer, A., Brondizio, E. & Tucker, J. (1996) Restoration of vegetation cover in the eastern Amazon. Ecological Economics 18: 41–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Muller, M.R. & Middleton, J. (1994) A markov model of land-use change dynamics in the Niagara region, Ontario, Canada. Landscape Ecology 9: 151–157.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Neel, M.C., McGarigal, K. & Cushman, S.A. (2004) Behavior of class-level landscape metrics across gradients of class aggregation and area. Landscape Ecology 19: 435–455.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nepstad, D.C., Stickler, C.M. & Almeida, O.T. (2006) Globalization of the Amazon soy and beef industries: opportunities for conservation. Conservation Biology 20: 1595–1603.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
O'Neill, R.V., Krummel, J.R., Gardner, R.H., Sugihara, G., Jackson, B., DeAngelis, D.L., Milne, B.T., Turner, M.G., Zygmunt, B., Christensen, S.W., Dale, V.H. & Graham, R.L. (1988) Indices of landscape pattern. Landscape Ecology 1: 153–162.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oliveira-Filho, F.J.B. & Metzger, J.P. (2006) Thresholds in landscape structure for three common deforestation patterns in the Brazilian Amazon. Landscape Ecology 21: 1061–1073.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ott, L., Larson, R.F. & Mendenhall, W. (1983) Statistics: A Tool for the Social Sciences. Boston, USA: Duxbury Press.Google Scholar
Peres, C.A. & Michalski, F. (2006) Synergistic effects of habitat disturbance and hunting in Amazonian forest fragments. In: Emerging Threats to Tropical Forests, ed. Laurance, W.F. & Peres, C.A., pp. 105–127. Chicago, IL USA: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Pontius, R.G., Cornell, J.D. & Hall, C.A.S. (2001) Modelling the spatial pattern of land-use change with GEOMOD2: application and validation in Costa Rica. Agriculture, Ecossystems and Environment 85: 191–203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenfield, G.H. & Fitzpatrick-Lins, K. (1986) A coefficient of agreement as a measure of thematic classification accuracy. Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing 52: 223–227.Google Scholar
Sader, S.A. & Joyce, A.T. (1988) Deforestation rates and trends in Costa Rica, 1940–1983. Biotropica 20: 11–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sala, O.E., Chapin, F.S.I., Armesto, J.J., Berlow, E., Bloomfield, J., Dirzo, R., Huber-Sanwald, E., Huenneke, L.F., Jackson, R.B., Kinzig, A., Leemans, R., Lodge, D.M., Mooney, H.A., Oesterheld, M., Poff, N.L., Sykes, M.T., Walker, B.H., Walker, M. & Wall, D.H. (2000) Global biodiversity scenarios for the year 2100. Science 287: 1770–1774.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schmiegelow, F.K.A. & Mönkköen, M. (2002) Habitat loss and fragmentation in dynamic landscapes: avian perspectives from the boreal forest. Ecological Applications 12: 375–389.Google Scholar
Schumaker, N.H. (1996) Using landscape indices to predict habitat connectivity. Ecology 77: 1210–1225.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simberloff, D. (1976) Experimental zoogeography: effects of island size. Ecology 57: 629–642.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skole, D. & Tucker, C.J. (1993) Tropical deforestation and habitat fragmentation in the Amazon: satellite data from 1978 to 1988. Science 260: 1905–1910.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Smeraldi, R. & May, P. (2008) O reino do gado: uma nova fase na pecuarização da Amazônia. Amigos da Terra, Amazônia Brasileira, São Paulo, Brazil.Google Scholar
Soares-Filho, B.S., Nepstad, D.C., Curran, L.M., Cerqueira, G.C., Garcia, R.A., Ramos, C.A., Voll, E., McDonald, A., Lefebvre, P. & Schlesinger, P. (2006) Modelling conservation in the Amazon basin. Nature 440: 520–523.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
SOMAVI (2000) Mapa do Município – Estradas vicinais e comunidades. 1:250 000. Alta Floresta, MT: Prefeitura Municipal.Google Scholar
Stauffer, D. (1985) Introduction to Percolation Theory. London, UK: Taylor and Francis.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steininger, M.K. (2000) Satellite estimation of tropical secondary forest above-ground biomass: data from Brazil and Bolivia. International Journal of Remote Sensing 21: 1139–1157.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Terborgh, J. (1976) Island biogeography and conservation: strategy and limitations. Science 193: 1029–1030.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Terborgh, J. & Winter, B. (1980) Some causes of extinction. In: Conservation Biology, and Evolutionary Ecological Perspective, ed. Soulé, M.E. & Wilcox, B.A., pp. 119–133. Sunderland, MA, USA: Sinauer Associates.Google Scholar
Trani, M.K. & Giles, R.H. (1999) An analysis of deforestation: metrics used to describe pattern change. Forest Ecology and Management 114: 459–470.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turner, M.G. (1989) Landscape ecology: the effect of pattern on process. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 20: 171–197.CrossRefGoogle Scholar